phew!

[George Robbins]

In article <2834 at rodan.acs.syr.edu> amichiel at rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen) writes:
> In article <1990Apr7.081638.1374 at eng.umd.edu> smaug at eng.umd.edu (Kurt Lidl) writes:
> >Why does the ugly spectre of VMS licensing agreements have to
> >rear it head in U*ix?  I want a nice little (?) operating system
> >that will just run the damn code that I put on it, without
> >seeing how many "users" are logged into the machine and so forth.
>  
>    Sorry, I sorta disagree strongly.  I see what you are trying to say, etc,
> but there are other considerations.  I see & talk to every day many many
> individuals & companies from all walks of life, that think nothing of the
> value of software products.

I don't mind an LMF facility when it encourages software vendors to go to a
simple dollars/session floating network license scheme.  I consider this much
better than some of the per CPU, price scaled by CPU or site license schemes
some software vendors play with now.

I think what a lot of Ultrix users object to more is the idea of DEC removing
yet more "standard BSD" features like pi, f77, franz lisp, and maybe cc and
replacing them with a set of expensive "layered products" with bizarre point
based license fees per the VMS world and a "license management system" to
serve as an "enforcer".

I'll be the first to admit that it costs money to port any of the Berkeley
languages to a new environment, but as a customer I see that as part of the
entry price of selling a BSD compatible system.

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr at cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)